Confessions of the Fox

by Jordy Rosenberg

  “You’re here to scout the place. That’s all.”

  Wild steered them through the massive Hall. The room, with its ten-yard-high ceilings, was something of a Cathedral. Hell-and-Fury startl’d like a clunch at the Taxidermy festooning the walls—crocodiles, turtles, rattlesnakes—animals of the New World, glaring down with open Maws. Advertisements profess’d coffee the “elixir of business” and a cure-all for everything from “moist humours” to “Hypochondriack Winds.”

  The room stunk of tobacco and Sweat. Everywhere the hum of trades: East India will triple ’er worth in a week…A stash of indigo dye off the Tamil coast…Tulips are comin’ back, don’t let anyone tell you different…Fresh stock coming in from Amsterdam later this week.

  On and on went the frenzied exchanges of the stockjobbers.

  But Wild was focus’d on something else.

  He watched the men glugging down the brew. They did it, he knew, to trade stocks from six in the morning ’til past midnight. Their eyes were red, blinking and hollow. He observ’d them exchange coin after coin for this awful brown drink that tasted of char and old shoes. Watched them escort doxies into the anterooms to blow off the loose corns in between hustles, and he knew that the grand Show they made of parading the youngest, spruciest, most well-rigged*1 of them past their mates and rival stockjobbers was important in their World. To demonstrate who had the most coin, and who retained his tumescent Prowess after hours of trading and talking.

  They were a new society of sanctioned Banditti.*2

  He knew he could market them something far more powerful than coffee. If only Evans were more focused. If the plan worked, they’d produce cash more times over even what the stockjobbers did selling shares in Tulips, Cane, and Tea.

  He look’d at Hell-and-Fury—a thin fog of Anxiety rose off his pale skin, his eyes blinking and weak—and he knew something else, too. If the plan worked, he could create the most powerful, invigorat’d band of policing Scoundrels the city had ever seen. Even the bottle-headed*3 fops like Hell-and-Fury. Even the caw-handed*4 coves like Scotty Pool.*5

  *1 Well dressed (also: most buxom)

  *2 Highwaymen; rogues. Speaking of which: As I am sure anyone could have predicted, I have agreed to Dean of Surveillance Andrews’ “choice.” Sullivan was right about one thing. I had been a little grandiose when I stormed out.

  So I’ll be paid to edit the manuscript. To produce a new edition. Like a Norton or Oxford Edition, just that this will be a “P-Quad Publishers Edition.” I know, I know. But since when did I care about prestige? I’m trying to tell myself it won’t be much different from what I’ve been doing. Keep my head down, do my annotations, focus on the work. True, I’ll have to upload regular transcriptions to Sullivan for review. Everything needs to be “digitized,” of course. Plus, Sullivan wants to be really “hands-on.” (I know what that means…surveillance culture, ahem.)

  I mean, okay, there’s no way around it. My labor produces this document—it’s (I am?) essentially free advertising for them. That’s what it is.

  It’s all so unsavory. But as a Marxist, I have to say: What isn’t?!

  At least I’ll be receiving a salary again.

  The world is full of compromises.

  *3 Vacant

  *4 Clumsy

  *5 SULLIVAN: WELCOME TO THE P-QUAD FAMILY! SO GLAD WE’LL BE WORKING TOGETHER!

  3.

  The poorer parishes were lock’d down that very night. When Jack, Bess and Aurie exited the Black Lion, the hail had abated, and the street teem’d with centinels. Several at every corner, shouting at coves to take to their quarters. They had scarves tied ’round their mouths and noses—their shouts muffled by rough Linen (quite the bit of theater, Bess muttered as she, Jack and Aurie pass’d by; Jenny had been engaged for a job at the pub). The street sounded like a sea full of honking sea lions.

  “Heading to the Stables,” said Aurie as he sped off towards the outskirts of the city. Jack knew he would walk all night to Bill Field’s stable where they stashed their loot, and sleep in the hay in mildewed Blankets among the mice and the rats. He would roger*1 Field’s freckled, wiry son too.

  Jack and Bess headed towards the bat house.

  “Can’t fathom this many centinels spread o’er the whole town,” Jack whisper’d, amazed. They were posted at every street corner, and then threaded down the streets, too, a constant Stream.

  “Not the whole town.” Bess took his hand and led him the long way through the tidier parishes. Once they hit Whitehall the streets were unpatrolled. Quiet and gleaming gold with lantern-light. They wandered through the quiet to the river.

  “See?” she said. The sound of their Footfall was the only disturbance in the well-to-do Hush. But Jack’s attention had shifted over her shoulder.

  Something loom’d, advancing out of the Shadow of London Bridge. A mass of black blotting out the streak of brighter Indigo that remained at the horizon—the last light of the setting sun. A ship with sails down, chains banging against naked masts. No persons visible on board. The ship moved very slowly. Barely, in fact. Some weak Currents drew it along, perhaps. The vessel bobbed sideways as much as it advanced forward. And then it stopp’d, sitting just past the Bridge like a massive buoy. Nothing stirr’d.

  “A Plague Ship,” Jack whispered.

  Bess was breathing fast—dragging him by the coat towards the shoreline for a better look.

  Just as they neared the shore, they were met with an angry, bulky burger blocking the way. “ ’Tis the poor and scroungy have brought it here, this plague! Filth ought to be sequestered to their own rancid, peculiar parishes.”

  Jack squeez’d his hands into fists, glaring.

  “Pick your Battles,” whispered Bess, leading him back towards the bat house.

  * * *

  —

  Inside, all the bats congregated in the Foyer, pacing, dialoguing in pitched tones about the news, leaning on each other, laughing and arguing in a jumble on the mossy green sofas. Some mollies were among them—Franny, dressed in a woman’s nightgown—paraded through the gaggle, then lay upon the couch, proceeding to mimick the delivering of a wooden baby to much uproar. The air was perfumed with Whiskey and Breath.

  “We’re to stay here?” Laurent—sprawled in an armchair—projected to the room.

  “For how long then?” Franny wailed. Another molly—a lolling, ruddy-skinned lad with a mop of blond hair in his eyes—knelt between Franny’s legs, holding the wooden baby, caressing Franny’s legs with his cheek. His eyes were closed, and he was smiling.

  A din of speculations.

  “Indefinite?!” someone shouted. “How’re we to make Coin—knock each other?”

  This last occasioned a chorus of laughter and Repartee as Bess and Jack headed upstairs to her rooms.

  “ ’Least we’re together,” Bess said, as they squirrel’d away to Bed.

  * * *

  —

  By the end of the first day of confinement, Bess and Jack had wept through their Clothes with perspiration. The peaked Ceilings in Bess’s chamber congregated the heat of all the Fires burning in all the hearths in the bat house. Bess’s window was not nearly enough to bring the required ventilation.

  Bess loung’d on the Bed, sipping wine and flipping through a stack of pages bound with twine. Ephraim Chambers’ Cyclopaedia was printed on the front. Jack assessed her focus and absorption. The Cyclopaedia? Was Chambers a client? Ordinarily he would make amusement of this fact, teasing Bess to dispel his jealousy. But it was too hot, and they were too cramp’d after only one day.

  The heat exacted its toll in languor and exhaustion, exacerbated by their confinement. Bess fizzled salt into her wine to restore her humors. Jack sat at the window, staring at the empty streets below, pulling hard at the air, hunting for twinges of cool.

  Centinels march’d thro
ugh constantly, muskets slung over their shoulders. Twice, urchins scrambled through the alley, arms loaded with stale buns from the bakery, hoping to evade notice. The centinels fell upon the children within moments and beat them senseless. Jack could hear echoes of other such Scramblings and Beatings down the alleys and lanes. The city was a symphony of bullysticks hitting Bodies. The thwack of Flesh breaking. The crack of Bone. Jack jumped at every report and slap from the streets below.

  “ ’Twould be a good time to conduct a raid,” he said through gritted teeth. He saw himself running down the streets, alive with hatred and Combat, the clarity of opposition.

  “ ’Twoud be an idiot time to conduct a raid,” Bess said, not lifting her eyes from her reading.

  * * *

  —

  The second day found them in much the same positions. Bess was further on in the book. Three more urchins—as well as one or two bands of sneaks and robbers who got the notion to test their fate against the centinels—had been beaten Bloody under Jack’s nose. The night before, they’d slept separated across some inches in the Bed on account of the heat.

  “I’d like to be near to you,” Bess said. “I’m sick o’ your rigging.*2 Remember that one time you let me see you?”

  She cross’d the room, her salted wine sloshed in her tin cup, and put her hand to his breeches-front, which had the Horn affix’d. He’d even taken to sleeping with it on. “I want to feel you.”

  Truth be told, Jack wanted to unclothe with her too—he did—but then he thought of the men who had done so before him, and the ones who did so regularly, and he was tormented. Confined together, day in and out, he looked at her and wondered why she wanted it from him when she could get it from so many other coves.

  He was on the other side of a high thick Hedge of branches with vicious tips. He could not come through. And she could not come to him.

  “I want to lie next to you,” he rasp’d, “but my”—he gestured at his chest, the Unaccountable Lumps that grieved him so—“are in the way.”

  “I don’t care a whit about that.”

  “You’ve been with so many cuffins*3.”

  “I wouldn’t call it ‘with.’ And anyway, I don’t want those cuffins. I want you.” She ran her hand through his curls. “You’re just having your daily attack of Nerves.”

  But it wasn’t Nerves. It was simply this: Jack felt himself a man. Or, touching Bess made him feel himself a man. And Bess herself, her Nearness, made Jack need his outside to come somehow closer to his inside. It was a contradiction, for this same perplex’d snarl of need made coming closer to her—in the naked way she now ask’d—impossible, too.

  “ ’S Chambers a customer?” Jack pull’d the book out of Bess’s hands.

  “Never met him,” she said, taking it back.

  “Where’d you get this, then?” Jack started pacing in front of the windows.

  “One of the regulars—Evans, a surgeon—”

  Surgeon. Was she trying to make him jealous?

  “A surgeon’s just a barber with a fancy title.” Jack halted his pacing and waved his arms about.

  “The surgeons are soon splitting from the barbers’ guild. ’Least that’s what I’ve heard.”

  She was trying to make him jealous. Probably to get him to clicket her smish-lessly.

  “Why’s this surgeon—this Evans—giving you books?” He had begun pacing again, running his hands through his hair.

  “I’m interested in a topic he works on.”

  “What topic?”

  “Chimeras*4.”

  Jack turned. “My mother call’d me that.”

  Bess chewed her lip. “Evans says Chambers’ Cyclopaedia’s one of the only scientific treatments of chimeras to date”—Just what kind of confidences has Bess shared with Evans? And why?—“and I figur’d he could illuminate me on the issue.”

  “Illuminate you?” Jack’s voice had risen. Bess turned away. He paused for air. “Scientific as opposed to what?”

  “Spiritual?” she said, turning back around and shrugging. “Occult. Mystical. It’s an interesting conundrum. Either folks believe chimeras to be Demons. Or they don’t believe them to exist at all. But Evans says it’s not a mystical matter. What we”—Jack darted a look—“what some people call chimeras aren’t demons, they’re just persons with—ah—”

  “You were going to say Aberrations.”

  “No.”

  “You were.”

  “I was going to say that ancient doctors thought chimeras to be natural but Monstrous—a natural monstrosity. Evans says they’re not natural, but they’re not Monsters either. They’re just humans with certain Changes. Differences. And this Cyclopaedia contains a science of chimeras. A”—she paused again—“survey. It’s just a survey of chimera-Creatures. Creatures with chimera-aspects. Hookworms, Garden Snails—”

  He glared. “Survey in the way they’re surveyin’ the town for Plague?”

  “No. Not in the same way they’re surveilling us now.”

  “Well, a bit tho’. It’s a bit like that.” Jack was glum. Then, “Were you indecent with him?”

  Bess laughed. “Yes, of course! He’s a customer—but if only you’d meet him. He’s rather absurd. A bloated beet of a phiz*5 with a giant white wiggy pomp.”

  “A beet with a proper arborvitae beneath.”

  “If you’re so concern’d ’bout Evans,” she continued, frowning, “you can find him holed up in Jenny’s room downstairs right now. He usually begs to see me, but he’s a bit too enthusiastick. It was getting a bit much. Some time ago, I directed him to Jenny.”

  Enthusiastick was ringing in Jack’s ears now—Enthusiastick Doctor.

  “Any case,” Bess was going on, “I heard a bat saying he got caught with the Curfew. So he’s bound to be downstairs. He’ll be owing a fortune.”

  Jack couldn’t help one moment of bitter Banter, which Bess mercifully ignored: “ ’Magine he can afford it.”

  * * *

  —

  That night, Jack was flooded with images of a pompous strapping Physician, complete with a blood-rich gaying instrument*6, spouting off to Bess about the science of Aberrations. The two of them talking about him—his Somethingness.

  When he was sure Bess had fallen to sleep, he padded ’cross the room to the Cyclopaedia, where it lay cracked open, spine up, on the Daybed near the window. He opened to the page on “Sexual Chimeras.”*7 It began with a long disquisition on garden slugs and other lawn-pests. Then, on the flip side of the page, a painted illustration.

  It was a human Chimera. More properly, a quite proximate view of a certain area of a human Chimera.*8

  The picture represented something which Jack ought to have known the contours of, but which, when examined in the book, appeared unaccountable and unfamiliar. Jack turned and twist’d the Book this way and that. The Night was dark and mossy with a low whisper of rain. Bess was snoozing soundly. Jack pulled his breeches to his ankles. Looked at himself. Then the book. Then himself again.

  The Picture was forcing a formulation upon him.

  There was a whispering in his head. Chatter came from some deep reaches, where frazzl’d Terror combined with profound Unsurprise. Connections were assembling. All his life he had somehow imagined that coves came in all shapes and sizes. But looking at the Cyclopaedia, he thought: Not this size. Not my size.

  This book, this Cyclopaedia, was a book of cruel diagnoses and classifications. And now something clarify’d itself to him, as if out of a Fog. He was something that existed only as a Scrawl on the world’s landscape—as if someone had come along and stepped on a beautiful painting of sunflowers with a jackboot full of Shite—and that monstrous blob of shite splatted in the middle of a field of flowers—that blob, Jack considered—was he.

  * * *

  —

&n
bsp; Jack slept hectically, falling into a fitful daze near morning. The rain had swept out, and clouds were gusting low over London, carrying a cold front when he woke into the wet gray. Peeking from the pillow, he saw starlings chirruping in Gangs across the sky, shooting urgent for the worm-riddled Thames shore. A rustle from across the room—Bess in the far corner, crouched over the chamber pot in her skirts. A feeling flashed through him. Longing. Unmitigated and total.

  The splash and echo of piss collided with ceramic. He untangled from the bedsheets and cross’d the room ’til he was standing bent over her, with one hand petting her head, the other between her legs. She was moaning and pissing into the cup of his palm—it ran warm over his fingers.

  He brought his fingers to his lips, tasted the sting of her on his tongue. She had her forehead against his belly, her arms around his waist.

  He would die for her effluvia—Something like how she slept with her nose tucked into his armpit—how they drowned in each other without satiety.

  Oh, the Contradictions.

  He would drink anything that came out of her. But he couldn’t un-smish*9 for her.*10

  When they unclasp’d, he dressed himself in his day clothes, picked up Chambers’ book, and headed downstairs.

  *1 Fuck

  *2 Clothes

  *3 Men

  *4 “A fabulous Monster, which the Poets feign’d to have the Head of a Lion, the Belly of a Goat, and the Tail of a Serpent” (Ephraim Chambers, Cyclopaedia).

  *5 Face

  *6 Penis

  *7 SULLIVAN: WE REALLY DO REQUIRE MORE EXTRAPOLATION OF “SEXUAL CHIMERA.”

  ME: It ranges. Hermaphrodism, heteroclitism, clitoramegaly, an abundance of masculine passions in a cis-woman, etc.

  SULLIVAN: I AMEND MY REQUEST FOR “EXTRAPOLATION.” WE REQUIRE SPECIFICITY AS TO THE MEANING OF SEXUAL CHIMERA AS IT IS USED ABOVE. READERS NEED TO BE ABLE TO VISUALIZE.